Hackers Post Story Claiming Tupac Is Still Alive on PBS Website

Ever since his tragic death in 1996, speculation has abounded that iconic rapper Tupac Shakur is still alive. The rumour mill was started up again on Sunday (May 29) when a story appeared on PBS's website with the title "Tupac Still Alive in New Zealand."

The story, of course, was a hoax planted by a group of hackers. The article also claimed that rival rapper the Notorious B.I.G. (aka Christopher Wallace) was living in the same, unnamed town. See a screenshot of the article above [via Rolling Stone].

The hacker group LulzSec (also known as the Lulz Boat) claimed responsibility for the prank, and posted a series of tweets mocking PBS. This included one that read, "Hey @PBS admins, you still trying to regain control? The Lulz Boat sails through your horrendously-outdated kernels!"

The reason for the hack was apparently the PBS show Frontline, which recently aired a program about the WikiLeaks website called "WikiSecrets." The group posted a message saying, "We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed. We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further... perusing."

This is hardly the first time a news website has been hacked with a story claiming that Tupac is alive. A similar report claiming to be from CNN circulated back in 2005. Read more about that earlier incident here.